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The racial and religious attacks against non-European immigrants that have been typical of Donald Trump's immigration policies from the time that his campaign began with vicious hate rants against Mexican immigrants 2 years ago, followed by his call to bar all of the Muslims in the world (originally including Muslim American citizens) from entering the US, are still continuing today in the form of his mass deportation agenda, his Muslim ban executive order which is now before the Supreme Court, and, most recently, his assaults on H-1B and other high-skilled legal immigrants.

See my June 11 ilw.com post on this issue.

In many other countries, attacks such as these on unpopular racial and religious minorities have led to the overthrow of democracy and its replacement by one-man dictatorship.

Could such a thing be happening now in the United States?

In order to answer this question, we have to look at the autocratic power that Trump is now using to fire any official in his administration who dares to look into any aspect of real or alleged corruption or collusion with a hostile foreign power on the part of Trump or his close associates.

One can quibble about whether Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey for investigating Trump's alleged ties with Russia amounts to full Obstruction of Justice, even though there is strong reason to believe that it does, since the statute involved defines obstruction as attempting to influencean investigation, not only actually trying to stop it.

But what is incontrovertible is that in trying to pressure both Comey and now fired US Attorney Preet Bharara into dropping investigations into possible wrongdoing by Trump or his campaign or administration officials, Trump is behaving like the head of what the respected journalist Mehdi Hasan, who has written articles for the New York Times, the Washington Post,The Guardian and the Times of London in addition to Al Jazeera, accurately calls a "Tinpot Dictatorship".

I urge everyone who cares about preserving America's democracy to read Hasan's full column at:

I have been listening to Trump and his propaganda machine in the wake of Jim Comey's testimony. I have noticed that they are emphatically denying that he ever said or did things that he was never accused of saying or doing in the first place! What amateurish hypocrisy!

They are substituting red herrings, quite unsuccessfully, all over the place. They are all over the map and clearly flustered! Good!

Trump is saying things like: "I never asked him for a "pledge of allegiance under oath"".

No, he didn't. He asked for a promise or assurance of "loyalty". This one stands out because he (Trump) was called on it the second he tried it and it is being re-hashed by the pundits and talking heads (except on Fox, of course). Heil Trump? I don't think so, Adolf! Comey don't play that! And neither do I. That is only one example, I'm sure journalists all over are looking for more.

I am also sick of the blatant and pathetically inadequate, efforts at misdirection.

When a Trump-loyalist "talking head" is confronted with something they cannot defend, justify, or explain away; they start talking over the person making the valid point and bringing up something totally irrelevant (and usually inane).

For example, if a calm person accurately lays out a timeline of events that truthfully shows the administration in an unfavorable light, the Trump-loyalist (the Trumpeter) might start talking about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Loretta Lynch & Bill Clinton, or Obamacare. Challengers were giving up in disgust, shaking their heads, and "going to commercial", probably so that they didn't blow up on air.

More and more, the truthful folks (like Anderson Cooper, Jeff Toobin, and my favorites, Don Lemmon and Wolf Blitzer) are refusing to be silenced. The "exasperation maneuver" is losing effectiveness! For that, I am grateful.

Let's stick to the point. Trump attempted to kill an FBI investigation. This was unethical no matter how else you slice it. Such behavior, if true (and I think it is true), was inappropriate if done out of ignorance, or possibly worse if done as an attempt to obstruct justice, or worst of all to initiate a cover-up by soliciting criminal behavior from Comey.

I hope there are tapes, of everything! He said of tapes when asked--"I'll tell you more about that, maybe, later".

How long till Sean Spicer quits? Sarah? Kelly? Jared? I think the last one (not related by blood) that will still be there when the dust settles, will be Steve Bannon. A nutcase he got from a recognized hate- group by way of a hate-filled fake news organization and propaganda machine.

Trump, so far, is doing the right thing on DACA, by continuing to grant new approvals and extensions at about the same pace that Obama was doing, even in the face of furious opposition by some of Trump's own right wing nationalist base supporters who are criticizing him for breaking his campaign promise to cancel DACA on his first day in office.

See my June 13 ilw.com post.

If Trump is as anxious to be remembered as a great president as he apparently wishes to be, a good place to start would be to tear up and throw most, if not all, of his other immigration campaign promises in the trashcan of America's immigration history along with his DACA promise.

So far, there has not been very much sign that this will ever happen, but one can always hope.